Cons

Bottom Line

A very basic little widget to copy files from iTunes playlists into a BlackBerry Pearl, but it could make the difference if you want to use your Pearl to play MP3s.

Feb. 7, 2007Sascha Segan

If you're an iTunes user with a BlackBerry Pearl, TunesSync for BlackBerry is a must-buy. It's a simple, inexpensive little mini-application that lets you load songs onto your Pearl by syncing an iTunes playlist rather than by dragging and dropping files in Windows Explorer.

The BlackBerry Pearl is a dandy little MP3 player. Sure, you could quibble about its small, 2.5mm headphone jack (which requires an adapter to take regular music headphones), its lack of Bluetooth stereo, and its odd usage of folders rather than playlists to organize music. But perhaps the Pearl's biggest deficit in the music player department, until now, has been its lack of integration with popular PC-based music jukebox programs.

TunesSync solves that, in a very basic way. It's a tiny little program you install on a Microsoft Windows XP PC. Just connect your Pearl, load BlackBerry Desktop, and tell your Pearl to drop into Mass Storage Mode by clicking a button on the device. Then you can launch TunesSync, which has only two buttons: Sync and Options.

To set it up, click Options. You get a list of your iTunes playlists and a check box, "Copy all music files, not just MP3s." If you tend to rip your songs into iTunes' default AAC/M4A format, you need to check that box. The Pearl plays M4A files just fine. You get to pick only one playlist to transfer over, though.

Then you click Sync, and the program copies your songs to your BlackBerry. That's it. (It doesn't really sync, which would involve both adding and deleting files; it just copies files.) Lather, rinse, and repeat as often as you want to add music. Then play the music back on your Pearl.

Yes, you can also drag and drop files from the iTunes window into the BlackBerry's music folder using Windows Explorer. This software just reduces the number of clicks necessary to copy your files, but that's important: It could get over the barrier between a process that's "kludgy" and one that's "easy."

Let's go over what TunesSync doesn't do. It doesn't sync videos, or songs you bought from the iTunes music storeit will dump both of those file types into your BlackBerry's music folder, where they will sit uselessly taking up space. It doesn't double-check to make sure your whole playlist can fit on your BlackBerry; instead, it spits an error code at you when you run out of room.

Neither does it sort your songs neatly into folders on the BlackBerry, so they look as if they're in playlists. It dumps them all into the Music folder willy-nilly.

It also doesn't ever delete anything from your handheldever. So if you remove any files from the playlist you're "syncing," you have to go in with BlackBerry Media Manager and delete the files you don't want by hand.

We hope that future versions of TunesSync will add all of these features. But for now, this $10 widget does just enough to make it useful to iTunes users/Pearl owners.

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About the Author

PCMag.com's lead mobile analyst, Sascha Segan, has reviewed hundreds of smartphones, tablets and other gadgets in more than 9 years with PCMag. He's the head of our Fastest Mobile Networks project, one of the hosts of the daily PCMag Live Web show and speaks frequently in mass media on cell-phone-related issues. His commentary has appeared on ABC, the BBC, the CBC, CNBC, CNN, Fox News, and in newspapers from San Antonio, Texas to Edmonton, Alberta.

Segan is also a multiple award-winning travel writer, having contributed to the Frommer's series of travel guides and Web sites for more than a decade. Other than his home town of New York, his favorite ... See Full Bio